Montessori School of Greater Lafayette Blog

Insights and inspiration from our Montessori classrooms.

First, I will start with what I saw this week. This was my favorite moment.

“Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company. Only a few love to be alone.” - Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939

Another photo. If you are familiar with Humans of New York, the book and website by Brandon Stanton, then I know you can relate. If not, I know you can relate.

This week in microfashion. Did she choose the paint or did the paint choose her?

Children dress so fabulously and so beautifully because they have not yet learned that other people are judging their choices. They wear what they like. I want to wear what I like but I feel childish. How old will I grow before I truly understand that being childish is the truest way to be?

And, one more photo.

What does it feel like the moment just before your mom wraps her arms around you?

And now, for what I heard.

1. I erroneously asked a child how she was enjoying her Kindergarten year at MSGL. She responded,"I'm not IN Kindergarten. That's why I'm HERE!"

2."That's a small story."

3.A friend was reading me a note from his lunch box."Look! Look it! It says I'm going to my grandma's house. And I think I'm gonna get a Spiderman hat when we go to the store."

4."Yeah. Let's do our maps."

5."Where's the damn lizard?"

File photo.

Rest easy. That darned lizard was found.

What did you hear this week at MSGL? We hope you'll tell us.

Have a terrific weekend!

Related Posts

This is What They're Thankful For

Somdatta and Felicia of the Canoe Birch Class and Cathy and Mary of the All-Day Program invited the children to tell who and what they are thankful for and then wrote their answers on leaves. Each class has a paper tree by the door displaying the children's gratitude. As this Thanksgiving Day draws to a close I thought it would be nice to share the gratitude of these 3, 4, and 5-year-olds with all of you.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

This week I heard...

“The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!" - Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind

Perhaps you like listening to and collecting phrases like I do. Our Montessori classrooms are great theaters for listening. Three, four, and five-year-olds are intensely thoughtful and they tell us so much about themselves just by talking with their friends.

This week I had the pleasure of working in the Willow, River Birch, and Canoe Birch classes and I collected as many fabulous phrases from the children as I could. The words are theirs, the spelling is mine.

On being the first to arrive... "The only time I'm not first is when Mommy brings me. Daddy is faster than Mommy."

"Frogs lay eggs, right? Butterflies lay eggs, right?"

"I had my birthday before my brother's."

"Our grandpa makes a Donald Duck sound."

While drawing dinosaurs with friends... "It's a Spinosaurus. It's the biggest carnivore on land and it's name means lizard. It reaches in the water just a little bit and snatches a fish with it's crocodile long snout."

"A drobeosaurus has toe claws and it goes 25 miles an hour."

A different dinosaur friend... "It runs 100 and 90 hours. He has a bunch of blood in his body. It's called Spinadoctora Hundreds."

"At my house I have five lipsticks. No, six."

A child was looking for a bike to ride on the playground. I asked, "I see that blue bike is available. Would you like to ride that one?" "No! he said. "I just fell off that one."

"I'm trying to sing Let it Go, in German, but it's too hard." (The children in one class burst into singing "Let it Go" from the movie Frozen at least six times in one morning:)

"Being in the sun is so much fun."

"Will you do something interesting?"

I like to listen to teachers, as well. I overheard a few of them talking about the possibility of having a couple of chickens at school and which type might be best suited to be Montessori chickens.

"They're good egg layers, the Wyandotte's. "And they're peaceful."

"I am concerned about them getting upset and flying up into the pine tree."

May all your chickens be peaceful as you enjoy some fun in the sun this holiday weekend.

~ Heather

Wayback Wednesday: 2001 - This Was a Church...

..and this was its steeple.

Don Harvey and Tony Harvey ready the steeple for removal.

When we remodeled the former Calvary Baptist Church in 2000-2001 to become our Montessori school, we had to replace a few fixtures. The steeple was detached from the roof and lowered by crane to the parking lot below.

What do you do with a second-hand steeple? We gave it to a church down the road.

The demolition crew also removed the fiberglas baptistry by cutting it into pieces. All of the beautiful wood pews were sold. You can see one being used today in the school office. The colored windows were eventually replaced with clear glass.

This is what Building B looks like today.

Have a great Wednesday!

One Duck's Destiny

The Duck - portrait by Harriet.

He could have landed anywhere. A bathtub in Chicago or maybe a swimming pool in Des Moines. But this rubber duck found a home inside an Illinois photographer’s toolbox. And for the past 30 years, he and his person, Harriet - a.k.a. “The Ducky Lady” - have traveled around the Midwest photographing school children.

The Duck’s job is to draw a smile from the child just before Harriet makes the portrait. He does this by “tickling” the child’s nose or Harriet’s nose. Sometimes he sits on her head and waits for the child to “blow” him off. It’s theater, really. Ducky theater. And it’s wildly successful. The Ducky Lady’s school portraits are the best because the children’s smiles are real. They’re smiling because they are laughing at the goofy antics of this dynamic duck duo. Harriet explains her tactics.

“In order to get the smile I am looking for, I try to make them feel comfortable,” she said. “For a second they forget they are supposed to smile and they just smile.”

If you have been a student or teacher at MSGL you have smiled for The Duck and The Ducky Lady - probably many times. They have been taking photographs together at our school for 20 years. And, like me, you probably have questions about The Duck and his amazing person that you were too timid to ask. This year on picture day I was able to hang out behind the camera with The Duck and Harriet. They agreed to an interview for our blog.The first question I had to ask was, is this really the original Ducky? Is it the same one I smiled at 15 years ago? “Oh, that's the original one,” Harriet told me. “He’s thirty years old. He doesn't squeak anymore and he's glued all over.”So why doesn’t she just get a new duck?“This is the only duck I really like,” she explains, “because it’s perfectly flat and it sits on my head.”

This is one lucky duck. He gets to see the world and he makes thousands of children smile every year. He is quite possibly one of the most famous rubber duckies in America - second only to the one in Ernie’s bathtub on Sesame Street. Over the course of his career he and The Ducky Lady have traveled to schools in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. He took to his career like, well, like a duck to water. But does he miss the water?That brings up another sensitive but important question. Why is he so dirty? Harriet explains that people think The Duck is dirty, but his feathers are just worn from years of being in show business. Getting picked up and placed on Harriet’s head every day has caused discoloration that won’t wash off.“I wash this duck every single day,” she admits.Just for fun, here is a photo of one of The Duck's siblings that was hatched at about the same time. Sure, he looks great but he hasn't spent his life on the road like our story's handsome hero.

I should mention that there ARE other ducks in the toolbox. They are small ducks that fit in Harriet’s pocket when she carries her camera and tripod to the classrooms to take group photos. But The Duck only works the main room. There is also a rubber frog that sometimes gets called up on the rare occasion that The Duck can’t get a child to laugh. Harriet’s experience tells her which toy to try.

The Duck and friends hanging out in his custom toolbox.

The Duck and the Ducky Lady do this show all day long. From September through November they are on the road 7 days a week. But Harriet is not complaining. She accepts her schedule with a smile.“I used to travel the entire winter, spring, and fall,” she says. “I don't care much for winter.”Now she spends the winter months doing freelancing work close to home. She also used to photograph weddings but discovered that her heart wasn’t in that business."I just love children, so that’s what I do,” she says.

Sometimes only your big brother can get you to smile.

Harriet’s love for children shows in the way she works with them and sees them as individuals. She visits the same schools and remembers the children from year to year.“I do remember kids,” she says. “For some reason its easy for me to remember. I don't remember names but I remember behaviors, you know. And I remember the faces.”Harriet is one of the few photographers who still takes group photos inside the classroom. Most photographers today create a composite class photo made up of individual student photos. Harriet believes you can see more of the child’s personality when he or she is standing with their classmates. She also does all of the photo proofing and editing herself.“I have to because I know the children," she says. I know a child from the moment I started to work with them and no one can make this decision but me. For someone who has never interacted with the child it’s impossible because they don't know. I insist on doing this, always."Sometimes parents are frustrated when their child gives a cheesy grin in a photo or refuses to smile at all. The Ducky Lady has excellent advice for parents looking to get a nice photo of their child. She explains that children cannot really control their smile before the age of 5 or 6.“There is an age after that when the kids can control their smile. They want to look the way they want to look,” she says.Until then, we have to find ways to encourage them to be themselves. That’s why The Duck is so important. It’s practically impossible to say “Hi, silly ducky” and not smile. (Go ahead. Try it. See? Practically impossible.)

She also encourages parents to let their children wear something comfortable on picture day. “Don't overdress them because children don't act the same way if they are overdressed,” Harriet suggests.

Lena and Ian had VIP passes to meet The Duck backstage. Ian brought along his star-struck friend.

It was great to spend picture day with Harriet and get answers to all of my (and your) questions about The Duck. But I had to confess that up until a few years ago, I didn’t even know she had a first name. I had always known her, as we all do, as “The Ducky Lady.” That seems to be how she likes it. But she was willing to share just a few personal details.Although The Duck doesn’t spend much time in the water outside of his daily bath, Harriet enjoys being outdoors when she’s not behind a camera.“I go kayaking and hiking. I belong to a kayaking group. That's what I do when I don't photograph," she says.A few years ago, our school director Suman invited Harriet and some friends from school on a trip to India. For Harriet, that was a dream come true. One favorite memory is of riding on an elephant with her friend Beth.“That was nice," she says, smiling. "India was my dream country. That's where I always wanted to go. I wanted to go there before they lose their saris and all the colors and become jeans people."At the end of picture day as Harriet packed up The Duck to leave MSGL, Lena and Anita made sure she got one of our tie-dyed school t-shirts. The shirt made Harriet really happy and I asked her why.“It’s yellow and orange,” she exclaimed. “My favorite colors!”

Wayback Wednesday: Halloween Edition

We're really reaching back here for Halloween gold - all the way back to 1989. Back in the day, the whole school had a costume parade in the Morton Center gymnasium. It was a big year for bunnies, clowns, and superheroes.

I hope you have enjoyed our first-ever Halloween edition of Wayback Wednesday. If you know anyone in these photos and want to share their names with us (or our website with them) we would really appreciate it. Have fun tomorrow and I hope you get lots and lots of candy - or not. Whichever you prefer :)

Montessori Preschool 101: Preparing for those first, exciting days!

Grace's first day of Montessori preschool, 1997.

Last summer, my 19-year-old daughter was getting ready to move into her first apartment. I was excited for her to have the chance to live on her own and had been setting aside household items that I thought she could use. One day, after admiring the “steal” of a chair I had found at Goodwill, she asked me, “Aren’t you sad that I won’t live here anymore?”

“Well, honey,” I said, “I always imagined that you would grow up and move out of the house. That was our goal all along for you to be an independent, self-sufficient person.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’m kind of sad that I won’t be sleeping here anymore.”

I reminded her that she had hardly slept at home at all since she started college last year. She lived in the dorm, four hours away from home and we often didn’t hear from her for days.

“Yeah, but this is different. I just can’t believe this won’t be my home address anymore. Are you going to change the garage door code?”

A-ha! Then I figured it out. She was worried about cutting the cord from the house where she grew up. I had been concerning myself with making sure she was comfortable “out there” and she was worried she would no longer be welcome back at home.

It occurred to me that not much has changed between that day and the day sixteen years ago when we were preparing to send her to preschool here at the Montessori School of Greater Lafayette. Back then we were so excited to help our “baby” pick out a new lunch box and indoor shoes but we had little idea what to do to help prepare her (or ourselves) emotionally for this new chapter. She sailed through preschool and is now working through nursing school just fine, but we have learned a lot since then. Today I am sharing some tips and advice gathered from teachers and parents here at MSGL to help you and your child prepare for the first days of preschool.

Talk about school - mindfully. Talk with your child about preschool when he is in the mood. Maybe he will bring it up or you can start the conversation, just don’t push too hard. If your child seems “done” with the conversation or is becoming anxious, let the topic drop until later. And be honest about your feelings when you do talk about school. Some children worry that their parents will be sad or lonely when they are gone. When you say, “I am going to miss being with you in the morning, but it makes me happy to know you will be enjoying yourself at school,” it lets him know that you will miss him but you are confident that school is a good place for him to be.

Check out the new environment.MSGL’s Parent Work Day is Saturday, August 16th. This is a great time to get familiar with the school and classroom environments and to be part of the school community. Children are encouraged to help clean lockers, pull weeds, and load and unload wheelbarrows full of mulch right alongside their parents and new classmates. And, each family member's time counts towards your volunteer hours requirement.

You will have another opportunity to get familiar with the school when your child attends her New Student Orientation visit on Monday, August 18th. This is her first opportunity to see her teachers and classmates in her new classroom. She can put her indoor shoes in her locker, locate her cubby and extra clothes box, and see where the bathroom is. The whole family can attend the Parent Orientation later that evening and maybe your child can give a tour of her new classroom.

Make new friends. You will receive a class list via email in August. Consider contacting a few families on the list to set up a playdate before school starts. Even if you can’t get together with any other families, you and your child can look over the names on the list together. You may discover that one of his classmates lives on your street or maybe someone has the same name as a sibling or a friend.

Help her dress for success. Our Montessori classrooms are prepared to encourage your child’s independence and you can help by providing your child with shoes and clothing that she can put on and take off by herself. Belts, suspenders, and jumpsuits look smart but they can be difficult for your child to use successfully. Provide your child a choice of clothing that allows her complete independence in her self-care routines. And please remember that preschool is a time to jump in and explore. Paint, snack, sand, and dirt from the garden can stain your child’s clothing, so please send her to school in clothes that can stand to get dirty.

Plan a morning routine.Now is a good time to do a mental run-through of your morning routine. Consider how much time your child needs to wake up, get dressed, and eat breakfast. Allow time for packing lunches, finding coats and shoes, and getting on the bike or in the car. Then add a few extra minutes. Parents and children who are not in a rush tend to have much better experiences at drop-off. Some families even do a few “practice runs” in the summer to see if they can get to school and work on time.

Create a goodbye routine. Discuss with your child how you each want to say goodbye at drop-off. Some families say, “After you put on your inside shoes and put away your lunch box, we will walk to the classroom and I will give you three hugs and two kisses before I go to work.” Some children like to wave to dad out the window and some parents leave their children with specific plans for what they will do after school. “Sonia is picking you up today” or “we are going to the Farmer’s Market on our bikes after school today.” Children have so little control over their daily lives that they appreciate at least knowing what is happening and when.

And while we’re talking about goodbyes, let’s take just a moment to consider the specter of separation anxiety.

What if my child cries when I walk away?Separating from your child that first time can be heart-breaking, but remember - it’s only for a few moments. The majority of children who are sad when they separate from their parents are able to calm themselves and choose an activity within a few minutes. If you have gone through the goodbye routine and are finding it hard to turn around and walk away, ask your teacher for help. Sometimes parents say, “Please help me. I need to leave.” That is the teacher’s sign that she needs to hold your child’s hand or pick her up so that you can walk away. Teachers don’t want to step in before you are ready to go but they are happy to help when you ask them.

The best thing you can do for your child at drop-off is to be consistent and walk away when you say you will. Lingering tends to just prolong the heartache for the parent and the child. The first few times you drop your child off may be difficult, but trust that with consistent repetition you and your child will develop a peaceful good-bye routine.

Talk with the teachers.Talk with your child’s teachers about how the adjustment period is going. The teachers help dozens of children adjust to school every year but this may be your first time. They expect you will have questions and concerns. Email is a great way to communicate with your child’s teachers and all of the contact information is available on the classroom web page at Msgl.org.

Help your child talk about his day.If this is the first time your child has been away from home you will no doubt be very eager to know what he did all day. Unfortunately, preschoolers often say they “did nothing” or “just played.” A lot of things happened between the time you dropped him off that morning and when you picked him up several hours later, but he might not yet be able to give a sequential list of his activities. Here are some ideas to help your child tell you about his day.

If your child brought home artwork or papers in his book bag, try asking him specific questions. “Please tell me about this. Are you studying planets? Does this go with another work? What class did you make this in?” Please note: Some children do not bring home very much paper work, especially in the early years. Montessori materials are designed to be concrete and hands-on to allow the child to absorb the experience but not necessarily record it on paper. The following link sheds some light on what your child might be doing if he is not bringing anything home. MSGL blog: What did you do at preschool today?

Look through the classroom photos on msgl.smugmug.com with your child. Teachers and parents take lots of photos throughout the week that provide a window into the life of the classroom. This is a great way to see what your child is doing, learn the names of his friends, and learn about some of the Montessori activities that he might be choosing.

Read the whiteboards outside of the classroom at drop-off and pick-up time. Announcements about that day’s special guests, food preparation activities, and exciting new units of study will be posted there.​

Check the teacher’s classroom blog at msgl.org each week. Each teacher gives an overview of the topics being explored and special projects coming up. This is also the best way to find opportunities to volunteer in the classroom where you can see first-hand what your child does at school.

Take care of yourself!The best thing you can do during these last few weeks of summer is to give you and your child the gift of a regular bedtime that allows enough sleep to wake up refreshed and ready for the big days ahead. Fill up with a good breakfast each morning and be extra patient with your child and especially with yourself. Parenting preschoolers, like college students, is hard work and there is no right way to do it. Follow your heart and follow your child, and in sixteen years, or so, you will be very proud of the people you have both become.